The Reason for the 3pm Saturday Blackout 

That’s how it was here in the states. It’s changed though with streaming services buying everything they can. Champions League was a disaster at one point, terrible app, too expensive, pure greed seeping over

so many streams you can watch for free , viprow for instance , never paid a dime watch all the games

Unfortunately this isn't true anymore, as we've become victims of exclusive streaming rights and now no matches are shown on basic broadcasters

Sky are ball bags

@@HotChilliePa illegal streams they everywhere , nothing feels more satisfying than watching sky for free

You think league football started a 100 years ago?

@@marknewbold2583 No? When did he ever say that lmao

@@marknewbold2583 The first ever league football season was 1888-89 so yes.

@@marknewbold2583 alright mister fact check, whats the exact amount of time between now and when it started?

@@TheMuldoonFella 139 yrs

(Apologies if this a joke and I’m missing the joke) but they kind of did when COVID hit, the blackout was removed and it was great! But they decided to keep the blackout once people could come back into stadiums. I’d imagine they’re just going to wait until the next TV contract comes around and just give the 3pm rights to Amazon

@@captainwilts2244 or DAZN potentially

It's not just the top division attendances you have to consider, but the entire league ( and non-league) as a whole. If Bob supports Man United, but goes to watch Oldham on a Saturday because he can't watch United on TV, removing the blackout would hurt Oldham.

@@MrSniperfox29 if bob is a paying customer who would rather watch United on TV than go see Oldham he should be perfectly within his rights to do that

@@captainwilts2244 Covid was different- our only option was to watch on TV. The trial I suggested would measure the impact of televised games on crowd attendance. The data obtained during lockdown is skewed because of the lack of options.

Wait until you discover Summoning Salt.

@@GrownUpKid94 is that a drug or an artist lmao

It was foreshadowing the Manscaped ad to come

Use streams

Yeah, that's the most annoying feature, a huge title-deciding European game that starts 20 minutes into the game

@@Dontknockmedown VIPROW Solves your problems or futemax multicanais, freestreams

Apart from the Premier League, in which we get 1 3pm kick off every Saturday. The only way to watch European games at 3pm is through streams, from either betting sites or otherwise

Its a digrace if you want to watch serie a at 5pm bt sports say they cant yet they show the feed in ireland even though they go against league of ireland on a friday night

Just go watch your team in the ground

@@jacobmoore1640 assuming you can get tickets, afford the tickets, afford the travel, have the time and live locally to your team.

@@jacobmoore1640 often that’s just swapping one illegal activity for another (touting).

@@jacobmoore1640 that'd be nice, but what if you live in a different country? It's not so easy for everyone to just go

@@TheWaveGoodbye-Music if you live in a different country why would you support that team unless you’ve moved away

No. It's due to English culture- where England is the birthplace of football. The experience of watching football in a stadium and on TV is completely different- especially in the lower tiers. A fan of a Premier League club is almost never going to watch a League 2 or Non-league team solely because his PL team's match isn't legally on TV.

@@BabsW Massively disagree with this. As a non-league fan, almost every single fan of that club has a premier league equivalent club that they support, but don't watch due to the blackout and come to the game instead.

@@stephenstanley266 They're hardly PL fans then. There are countless illegal streams and VPNs to watch PL matches.

@@BabsW You're hardly a fan of your club if you're not going to the games and watching illegal streams.

@@stephenstanley266 I live in the US. I watch legally on TV. And since I know I wouldn't be able to afford an amazing seat, I prefer to watch matches on TV anyway.

Most people I know don't stream illegally out of necessity, they do so because they don't want to pay.

@@michaelscott7166 not gonna lie mate, it may be true of older generations but I do not know a single football fan under 30 who doesn't regularly pirate games. It's not even remotely hard

@@beanoboy62 I make i a thing where I’ll watch 1 a night because it’s that easy. You find yourself watching Ghanaian 5th division football when there’s nothing on

@@Never-you-mind literally, there are so many websites streaming it that it's probably impossible to stop. You sound a bit more committed than me 😂, but yeah why not if you can

@@beanoboy62 something to fall asleep to doesn’t cost me anything 😄

I'm a barca fan and i remember this. There was a big game in La Liga and they went against the rule and showed the game. They must have been hit hard though because i remember later in the season the El Clasico was due to kick off at 3:15 on a Saturday and they didn't show it.

What year was it? What I remember is that every clasico was broadcast around the 90s+

@@henryreturns1397 this was much more recently, like the last 3 or so years

Serbia? I am from Serbia and all Super liga games are televised and the British style 3pm kick offs don't exist here. Another thing is attendences in Serbia are very low in general.

Yeah they seemingly said the blackout is a uniquely English thing but I'm pretty sure Scotland is the exact same. Our FA Cup is the only Saturday 3pm game allowed to be shown.

It’s bizarre but it’s explainable

I literally _just_ found out about the blackout (by virtue of this very video). And yes, i seems like a bizarre rule to me too.

@@BarryRerack147 With that way of reasoning you could as well argue that TV should not show any movies, so that people go to the cinema instead. Plus, I deem it highly debatable whether the surplus of people attending Chesterfield vs Wycombe on a wet Saturday afternoon because they couldn't watch Man United vs Liverpool instead is of any significance at all.

@@lonestarr1490 they will do exactly what they did with bundeliga here. Premier league will get priority, lower leagues will kick off at awkward times. Supporting my local club is easy because they almost always kick off saturday at 3pm. Maybe if you supported yours you wouldn't have this problem.

Nope, it'll just be like bundesliga where lower leagues have awkward kick off times. Supporting my local club is easy because almost every kickoff is saturday 3pm.

You didn’t just use the phrase “loyal television crowd” seriously did you?

@@ging23456 he's not wrong people move all around the country theres a lot of loyal supporters who are TV based that simply just can't afford costs or travel time. Frankly it's down right direpectful to call them unloyal just because they can't afford to spend 1000s of pounds a year following there club

@@dalecn2417 I mean that only really applies to prem clubs as the other league have Ifollow and mainly we're talking about the big clubs. Then question why people support united and liverpool in london for the most part? Not really out of loyalty when they could actaully be loyal to their local. Look at Manchester. Oldham and Bury financially ruined and clubs destroyed/dead. You're telling me the 500,000 in the city and Old trafford can hold what 70k? 20k of those supporting Bury and Oldham would have clubs in different states if they really loved football. Secondly alot of people I know who support a team and had season tickets previously just kept their season tickets and go to games when they can and sell the others when they can't. This streaming at 3pm has only been a thing the last 10 years people would watch soccer saturday so whats the issue they were happy supporting their club then?

Abolish the blackout -> kick off times for lower leagues are moved around to facilitate prem viewing -> supporting my local club becomes super irritating because of plastic who don't support their's.

Haha. Africans via Supersport do

Seriously???

Exactly this. It's so simple I'm shocked it's never been put in place. 1 match Friday night, 2 on Sat Midday, 2 late on Sat , 2 Sunday midday, 2 at 2pm Sunday, 1 at 4pm on Sunday. Plenty of time to get all the matches played, televised and not clash with Sat 3pm.

Thank you

Imagine if games start at 12pm, 12pm can be a non league game, then 2pm for lower division game, 4pm for 2nd division game, and 6pm being a premier league game like the main event.

As someone who goes to a lot more away games than home games. I'd be more for it if it meant that every weekend game kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday. Getting to grounds by public transport can be a nightmare for early kick offs on a Sunday. Likewise getting back from late kickoffs on Friday and Saturday can be difficult.

Lots of people attending lower league games often attend as an addition to supporting EPL teams. Televising the EPL games could be potentially very damaging to lower league attendances

@@mattpalmer6071 Ok? Then televise non league games and force people to buy tickets to watch prem games in person... at the end of the day, it doesn’t mean anything to lower leagues.

I know but why did the switch the channel

Foreign countries watching football streaming is rubbish.

Exactly. I might consider not pirating if I could get a subscription where I could watch every game. It’s so archaic.

@Adam Hetherington the Spanish salary cap system is such a good idea. Rather than limiting individual salaries you limit the sum total so you can still bring in the star players but don’t have a load of wasters chewing up big wages and have to push them out.

Yeah there needs to be a proper study to determine whether it should stay or not I can see the reasoning for maybe the top prem teams for wanting the blackout especially if their attendance isn't amazing (I'm looking at man City) but for lower divisions its just a hindrance Then again American sports aren't the most ideal for fans due to the lack of relegation and promotion

@@ciaranmck4469 looking purely at the finances tho attendance shouldn't matter considering TV/streaming deals. It would make more sense to do what the bundesliga does with different time for not top flight games. That's what the US does too. It makes no sense that Americans have twice the access to european games than you guys do for much cheaper.

@@ciaranmck4469 “Due to the lack of promotion and relegation” I disagree. The NBA and NFL model ensures that even small market teams gets a chance to compete with the top teams. Rules are in place so HELP small market teams like giving them draft picks to sign the best young player. Other rules like luxury tax so that if rich teams spend over the cap, they pay a tax for every million dollars they spend over the cap, a salary cap to make it fair for “small spenders” teams. Not every team has lots of money to spend so add in salary cap to make it fair for small market teams. Stuff like this improves competition, level the playing field for all team. If American League sports add in pro/rel, that’s going to destroy the small market teams and their chances of competing with the top teams. If they were to get relegated, can you imagine how it feels for a 5th tier English team that stays there for 10+ years? That’s not competition. How do you expect them to get to the premier league if they don’t have lots of money to spend like premier league teams?

@@GTM9164 Well, it is ESPN after all. Especially when some people work low wages. Maybe I’m wrong.

@@robert2690 very simple, if a lower tier English team are able to have owners who are rich enough to allow their profits to be eaten into you can have quite a menacing team. As for just naturally progressing well we've seen it happen, Liverpool is great example we came from the depths of the second division barely surviving relegation only to win the 1st division league after only 2 years since getting promoted. Or take Leicester for example who got promoted to the Premier league in 2014 a year after that famous Deeney goal then they won the league 2 years later in 2016 like how does that not prove your wrong? Also regarding about draft picks I mean more often than not those players get sold when they come into their prime anyway because why would they want to be playing in a team with less of a platform on the main stage? And do college teams even offer contracts with pay anyway lmao? I get what your saying teams lower down are still making money but what's the point in that if you can't regularly compete agasint the top teams? What's the point in improving their squad if they can't be in the same league sure they can play those teams in the NFC and AFC but if they can't compete in those leagues like what's the point? American football gets around this by having no actual sport pyramid but still what's the point in just 1 major professional league I don't understand it and why is that league closed wouldn't it be beneficial if these college teams became professional teams and were allowed to be promoted or better yet make new professional leagues under the NFL that is there to benefit newer teams, I get that American football is a monopoly but why the need to be a closed door? You ask any football fan in Europe from lower leagues why they support their team because they have the dream that one day they'll make it to the top and it does happen there are teams rn who were down in division 4 but are now fighting for a Premier league spot and if they get it they're able to make big money if not they're still able to make big money from play offs

Except the current rights holders....

@@jb5819 who gives a damn about them?

@@jb5819 You mean the rights holders that don't have the 3:00pm games anyway??

Thank you.

It's so all the drama happens at the same time so it all happens at once. There also might be something in there to prevent match fixing same as the final group game of the world cup

No the die hard Dagenham fan will of course go to game regardless however the Liverpool fan who lives 1km from the Dagenham stadium who occasionally visits his local club would definitely be put off from going if he could easily watch the Liverpool game from his sofa.